Demon Vampire (The Redgold Series) (46 page)

The sun fell heavy from the sky as Yugo walked out of town. People looking at him didn't seem to want to give him the time of day, nor dare ask him what he was doing with an injured soldier. Everyone left Yugo alone as he walked to a solitary wooden hut at the edge of town. Yugo set Orhn's body to rest on a dirt mound in the hut. He sat and waited next to Orhn's corpse.

Seven hours had passed by the time Orhn took his next breath. The reanimation had begun. Stunned by his new surroundings, Orhn wailed about, with little affect. He was weak, unable to stand under his own power. Yugo arose out of a meditation to calm Orhn.

“You're safe. You're alive for now.” Yugo spoke as if there was something else coming, something worse, something Orhn was to dread.

Orhn said with a faint tone. “What's to come Yugo? What do I have to live through next?”

“You will have to endure.” Yugo said with a low saddening tone.

“How painful will it be?” Orhn asked, his throat dry, straining to speak.

“You'll want me to kill you again.” Yugo said honestly. “Blades hold no candle to this pain. Fire is but an irritation to it. With all other types of agony, there is a limit to what you will feel, a level to which the pain loses its astounding effects. That does not exist in the land you are destined. It will engulf you, burn itself in your everlasting memory. It is what we all go through.”

“Is it what you went through?” Orhn asked.

“Yes.” Yugo told Orhn.

Orhn was silent.

“You will feel this Orhn.” Yugo sat down to the head of the dirt laid bed.

“How many days?” Orhn's chest began to hurt as he felt the wound closing, reforming to seal the gap.

“I will have to keep you fed for the duration. You must drink a gallon a day of fresh human blood to survive this. I will have to travel to the neighboring towns to collect it, to collect them.” Yugo was holding back the most important part.

“Yugo, how long? How long until it starts?” Orhn grabbed at his chest, there was a sharp pain. There was only a puddle where his heart once was. A throbbing mass of open flesh that he did not recognize. The pain quickened, it became worse.

Yugo removed Orhn's hand and held it down to his side. “Don't pick at it.”

“Where's my heart, Yugo? What happened to my heart?” Orhn was panicking, the pain was increasing.

“You don't have a heart Orhn.” Yugo's words were impossible. “I destroyed your heart when I killed you.”

“Then what is this? What is this in my chest?” The pain was overwhelming Orhn.

“It's what's left.” Yugo told Orhn. “Your blood is trying to push itself through your body without a heart. It will continue to do this until you can reform a new heart. Until you fully become a vampire.”

“What happens until then Yugo? What happens?” Orhn was beginning to lose consciousness.

“We pray.” Yugo's eyes were serious.

The pain gripped Orhn. He managed to make out one word before blacking out. “When?”

Yugo shook his head, clenching his lips. “It's already begun, Orhn. My blood is slowly affecting you. The pain you feel is your own body trying to defend itself in vane from what I have done. It will be as if your body is being torn in two. Your blood will boil in the skin, your head will ache, your very soul will weep for a death that will never come.”

Time passed as Yugo sat next to Orhn. A few hours later Orhn woke for a few minutes.

Orhn writhed left and right in the dirt bed. He was groggy and still experiencing the same pain he fell asleep with. Orhn turned to face Yugo. “How many days? How long will this go on? How long am I going to endure this?”

Yugo was silent, he did not want to tell Orhn.

Orhn quivered, the pool in his chest sloshed. The pain was increasing again, it was becoming hard to speak. “A day, two? How long!?” Orhn coughed, a dark coagulated clump came out of his mouth, rolling into the dirt.

Yugo said nothing.

Orhn heaved as his entire body convulsed with the motion. It hurt, tremendously. “How long Yugo? How long will this last?” Orhn coughed again.

“Try not to think of it in days. It's better if you not know how much time has passed. I want you to remain lucid, concentrate on the time line. Think of the life you will have after it is gone. After the pain has left you. If you don't, it will take you. Your mind will be lost to it, to the pain that you are about to feel.” Yugo hung his head low and patted Orhn's right shoulder.

“God damn it, Yugo! Are you always going to be like this with me!? Tell me!” Orhn cringed. The pain was searing now, it penetrated his muscles.

“Three days.” Yugo confessed.

“Good, at least one is over.” Orhn felt a small sense of relief.

“No, Orhn. It's only been a few hours since I brought you here.” Yugo knew the pain that Orhn was feeling, he knew what was to come next. “The three days start tonight Orhn, not now.”

The realization hit Orhn with the next wave of pain. It was still increasing, it was ripping him apart. Orhn was barely able to hold back the screams in his mind.

“My only consolation is that you will lose consciousness repeatedly. Just drink what I ask you to and remember why you said yes to me.” Yugo said while standing up. He walked away from Orhn to the door of the hut. “I have to get your first meal. I won't be back for a few hours.” Yugo stepped and turned around. “There's no one for miles up here, it will help to scream. It's strenuous on your body and it will cause you to pass out more quickly. Remember to keep breathing. I will see you in a few hours.”

Orhn couldn't here Yugo's advice anymore. The pain had taken him. Orhn screamed out, his entire body writhing in one motion to the mind bending sensation. The screams were ripping his throat open, making a terrible gurgling sound that echoed across the hut walls. Eventually, Orhn blacked out again, setting to rest the pain he was in.

Yugo left with the sight of Orhn passed out in the hut. Blood oozed from his mouth. Orhn had bitten his tongue and there was a string of liquid still attached from inside his mouth. Even unconscious, the pain caused Orhn to close his eyes tight. What was left of Orhn's heart began to beat faster, harder, with a deep slicing pain striking him in the chest with each pulse in rhythm.

When Orhn opened his eyes, Yugo was gone. The pain was consuming him, stealing the light away from the room. It was a screw grinding in his body, it wrenched, cutting into him. Orhn rolled side to side as a constant wave of agony washed over him. Again, he passed out.

* * * *

“Did you wake up while I was gone?” Yugo's voice rung out from Orhn's dreams.

Orhn's eyes still closed from the pain as he laid there in a pile of his own fluids.

“It seems your skin is taking it the worst. You have boils up and down your body.” Yugo's words were not comforting to Orhn. “I've been soaking them in blood, but they keep forming. It might have something to do with the nature of your vampire gift. For now all I can do is keep you supplied with blood. Don't open your eyes, it's better that way. Just scream and sleep through this.”

Orhn groaned lightly with what little strength he had left. He was being drained, his will waning.

“I'll be back in another five hours. Your body will need more blood by then.” Yugo turned and left the hut, in search of more blood.

* * * *

“I'm back, with more blood than I had promised.”The candles in the room flickered as the wind from the door pushed them to activity. Yugo had brought in two large wooden buckets of blood. He took a ladle and fed it to Orhn, occasionally basting him with it as well. “The boils aren't slowing down, they're all over you. I hope this isn't going to be permanent. I would hate to have to kill you after you've suffered like this.” Orhn blacked out as Yugo's words came to a close.

* * * *

Light shown through the cracks of the doorway. It was day. Orhn had survived the night. The pain was unrelenting as it woke him, it was soul crushing.

“Orhn, are you still there?” Yugo's hand shook Orhn to his wits. “The boils have broken and they are beginning to crust. As stiff as your body feels right now, this is a good sign. It means your body is accepting the change. I've already given you the blood you need for tonight, but I'll get more just in case. Don't open your eyes yet, Orhn, you don't want to see this.”

Orhn exhausted, laid his head to the side and fell asleep, shaking.

* * * *

“Orhn! Orhn! Breathe! You can't die yet, stay in there!” Yugo snapped Orhn awake with yelling and a sharp, quick thud to his chest.

Orhn's heart had stopped beating, he was dying when Yugo got back from his latest trip. Orhn's chest ached, most of his ribs were broken. The whole had closed, but Yugo had done more damage.

Orhn cried out in pain. No sound made its way from his throat. He tried to cough, it was dry and unproductive.

“Here, this will help.” Yugo splashed blood in Orhn's face and in his mouth.

Orhn immediately coughed up another large blood clot and could instantly breathe easier.

“That probably wasn't helping. I'm glad I came back when I did. It's been a little longer than five hours, it's been seventeen. I'm not sure how long you've been like this, but it will only be another day or so now. Hang in there Orhn.”

Lightheaded, Orhn passed out.

* * * *

“It's been two days Orhn. Do you feel any better?” Yugo's words were the only thing Orhn could hear.

The constant wind that had been recently wrapping at the hut was silent. Yugo's voice had come as a good sign. Orhn's eyes were clotted with the layers of blood Yugo had been treating him with. There was not a single glimmer of light that reached Orhn's sight. Orhn moaned, letting Yugo know that he was not feeling any better. The pain was still there and it had not decreased. Only Orhn himself was lessening, the sensation was absorbing him, making him numb to his life, to everything. It was closing his thoughts to nothingness. It was smothering him.

“It's supposed to be finished by the third day. Then again, I've never seen a fledgling develop boils either. This is the fourth day, it will end soon Orhn, I know it will.” Yugo poured more blood on his skin and into his mouth.

Orhn drank it slowly, hoping it would ease the pain. He knew it was helping, but his body displayed otherwise.

“Rest Orhn, it will be over soon.” Yugo's words of encouragement were sincere.

Yugo could feel the pain in Orhn by bearing witness to his hideous body. There was no longer a distinction between what was flesh and what was not. The constant treatments of blood had merged the skin, clothing, and top layer of blood together. The leather had absorbed into Orhn and became part of his body. The vampiric virus was changing him in a way that Yugo had never seen or read about. As he said, the process should have been complete by the third day. Nothing made sense with Orhn's condition. The boils, his heart stopping, none of it was supposed to take place in a normal turning. Yugo was worried.

Orhn relaxed as the pace of his heart eased. He was getting colder, he fell unconscious. Yugo let him rest.

* * * *

Orhn awoke to a pressure on his eyes and then his mouth. There was a crackling sound too, but his couldn't place it. Traces of daylight twinkled through Orhn's eyes as a dull sensation drug across his eye. Slowly, surely, Orhn was realizing what was going on and what Yugo was doing. There was a crunching sound. Then all Orhn could see was red as the light poured back into his eyes. Orhn tried to move, but his arms were lashed to his chest. Yugo was on top of him and pressed something into his face. The skin was breaking. The sound was becoming crisper as a pressure lifted in Orhn's ears, one at a time. Yugo got up as Orhn's eyes came into focus with the red shade still constant in his vision. Yugo was using a knife to cut open Orhn's mouth. Orhn shook, realizing what was going on. The feeling was a blade piercing into his flesh, into his face. Yugo had cut into Orhn's eyes, removing his lids to let him see. The blood had crusted over his entire face. Yugo had to cut Orhn's lips open to keep him alive.

Yugo huffed. “What a piercing red.” Yugo sighed. “Well, can you see now? There's not much sense to keep you in the dark, not for this long. It's been another day, and you've stopped writhing in your sleep.” Yugo sat down next to Orhn's right side. The dirt was stained red with rotting liquid that was rancid around Orhn's body. Yugo decided to leave Orhn's nose alone, mostly out of pity.

Orhn gestured with his eyes to his arm.

“They're fused to your skin and to your chest. I thought it would be pointless to slice you up that much since its going to happen again with the next rinsing of blood.” Yugo reminded Orhn. “I thought it would be a refreshing sight to see that you're still alive.” Yugo said while cleaning off the knife of crusted, blood-caked skin.

Orhn attempted to speak, there was only pain as his tongue moved. The gurgled sound let Yugo know he was trying to ask him something again.

“Yes, I know it hurts. I had to cut out your tongue so you wouldn't bite it off. I cauterized it too, so you wouldn't bleed out. Don't worry, it'll grow back. That's one of the perks. After all this is done. Think, one day we'll both laugh at this.” Yugo chuckled with a half hearted enthusiasm that was more of a way to convince himself than Orhn.